tru

Well, it seems summer is hanging on like an ex this week, so it’s my noise-makin’, wonder-filled chatterbox and I, and a low creek all to ourselves. She noticed it was Girls Night Out Thursday night downtown, and asked why we were not out. I promptly offered her a rain check for Friday night since we had an away game. She insisted the creek was calling our names. I’m doing something right.

I squat a minute and watch water skeeters skimming the glassy creek top, and from my angle it looks like raindrops pinging a reflective slab. There’s dozen of coffee-mug rings rippling out, and I’m thinking coffee sounds good about now.

She is more curious than a cat and spooks just as easily. I watch her lean in to inspect caterpillars and crawdads, only to shriek and giggle nervously. She’s fascinated and fearful, both. I so honestly relate to her. She lives in the tension, and kudos to her for doing so. 

We point out the bank she stood crying at earlier this summer. All the kids were taking big leaps into the much higher waters then. She stood frozen there at least 20 minutes as we all cheered her on. She wanted to jump so badly, but terror… We faced it together and made a compromise of an effort off a much lower edge. I remember feeling exasperated by her want-to but can’t-do. Again, with the amens to this little girl. 

In the midst of her incessant chatter, I interrupt to say, “Nature is where we go to listen…not talk.”

But all for naught. This rattler is entirely oblivious to listening to nature; she’s demanding it all listen to her. 

She whips rocks at the catfish and squawks at the dragonflies. I drift off in a trance watching minnows with iridescent bellies flashing silver as they bob at fuzzy rocks below — but not for long. I snap back to big arms and a deep voice as she’s belting out some sort of symphonic piece with a faint resemblance to Carol of the Bells. Yes, my child is the mistral and the movement, all in herself. 

She’s one of my favorite muses, that Tru Evelyn. She’s both protagonist and hero, and isn’t that just true to life? 

Tis Tru….